Single Payer?

It used to be said that there were three professions that you didn’t go into in order to get rich. These three professions were: preacher, teacher, and doctor.

This was because supposedly the people who chose these career paths did so because they were called to them, not for the money.

In recent decades, preachers and doctors have removed themselves from that equation, with many in both professions choosing their profession for the sole purpose of getting rich. In too many cases, they haven't been interested in the well-being of their clientele, but rather in how much money they can make off of them.

If we go to the formula of everyone paying premiums to Medicare instead of Humana, Cigna, Aetna and the rest, then we will lose some of those doctors, due to the fact that they will no longer be able to make a fortune in the profession. In my opinion, those are people who shouldn't be doctors anyway, and I say "good riddance".

Considering that the insurance company lobby claims that over $100 billion a year is "minimal profits" and that the insurance industry spends over a million dollars a day on advertising, I would imagine that we could use some of those premium payments to fund the education of the many new doctors and nurses we seriously need.

Of course, medical schools will have to cease their elitist practice of limiting the number of med-school graduates that are allowed per year, but this might be a small price to pay.

I believe that, once the artificially low number of new doctors allowed and the astronomical cost of the education are removed as stumbling blocks, we will find that there are plenty of good, caring individuals who actually have the calling.

Merry Christmas to 9-11 First Responders from your Senate

Here are 3 links to segments of The Daily Show.


WARNING: If you are a staunch Republican, clicking these links will very likely destroy your illusions about your elected officials. If it doesn't, we need to talk.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-13-2010/lame-as-f--k-congress

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-16-2010/worst-responders

WARNING: This next one will make you cry, unless you are a Republican Senator (by which I mean: you just don't care about the first responders.)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-16-2010/9-11-first-responders-react-to-the-senate-filibuster

And here is a list of who voted what.

http://oakminde.blogspot.com/2010/12/who-cares.html

John Cornyn is one of my Senators, and his web page, with contact info and all, is cornyn.senate.gov. I am sure that, if you follow the same formula, you can find your own

Senators' pages and either congratulate or condemn them, as you see fit.

If you think what the Republicans did was right, very likely silence on your part will convey to them your feelings. If, however, you feel that they were in the wrong,

then the only way that they will know that is if you let them know. Lack of public engagement is why, very often, they feel like they can do what they wish with no consequences.

Zadroga Bill Congratulatory Letter to my Senator

Dear Senator Cornyn,
I understand that you voted with all other Republican Senators to keep the Zadroga 9-11 First Responders Health Care Bill from coming to the floor of the Senate for an up or down vote. Congratulations on allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to come before the health care of the true heroes who, without thinking of themselves, sprang into action on that most horrible of days.

But at least all of you Republicans stuck with your convictions, showing the rest of us where you truly stand with respect to those selfless men and women. The wealthy of this country can rest easy knowing that you and people like you are there for them, to ensure that they get those tax cut extensions, no matter who has to suffer for it.

I understand that you and your comrades are also unwilling to work the week between Christmas and New Years to try to work some things in. Senator, everyone I know (who has a job) will be working that week. Most of the people I know will make something like 1/7th your salary. I, and I am sure a lot of other people, would like to know just why it is that you and your associates believe that you are so much better than us, your employers, that you cannot work those days.

I also would like to know why it is that you and your associates, allegedly our employees, make so much more than the rest of us? You all seem to believe that the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is enough for us common schmoes to get by on, so what is the reasoning behind you guys taking so much more than that. I do understand that you guys have to maintain a residence in your home states and in Washington. So I would be willing to allow $14.50, and we can pay for your coach class airfare to and from out of the general fund. I think, however, that we are going to have to install a time clock, as from my understanding you guys don’t work full weeks even when there is no major religious holy day to conjure as a reason.

Again, congratulations on shafting the true heroes of this nation while at the same time extending tax cuts to your true constituency, the 2% of the population who make over $250k a year.

Merry Christmas to you as well. I hope yours is better than those emergency personnel you helped to shaft.

Climate Change?

It seems to me that we could seriously just pull "global warming" and even "climate change" completely off the table.

If you look hard enough, you can find arguments both ways, for and against, either supposition. What you will be unable to find, however, is any intelligent argument for continuing to pour pollutants into our air, water, and soil. Yet all of the people arguing against the possibility of global warming or climate change are arguing for polluting.

The earth is, at least for now, the only planet we have. It somewhat behooves us to look after our ability to survive on it. Seriously, we are not going to do anything, short of all out nuclear war, that would seriously and adversely affect this planet, at least on a geological time scale. The planet will bounce back from any damage we do to it.

The problem is, it will take eons, and we, the human race, can be seriously and adversely affected by our own actions. In fact, we already are. Asthma cases are on the rise, especially in urban, high pollution areas. Skin cancer is rampant.

So let us set aside this notion, however relevant, of global warming. Let us, instead, worry about pollution. If we cut the pollutants, it will affect climate change anyway.

Who Cares?

To: 9-11 First Responders

From: Republican Senators

DROP DEAD. Oh, and Merry Christmas!

After ten years of pounding the drum in honor of the emergency workers, firefighters and police officers who were first responders after the worst attack our nation has seen since Pearl Harbor, Republican Senators on Monday seemingly showed how they truly feel about those responders. In a staggeringly lock-step partisan vote, the Republican Senators, with the exception of Sam Brownback of Kansas, unanimously voted to keep the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 from coming to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Brownback abstained, presumably because he did not want to anger his constituents with a nay vote on this important issue, but was also unwilling to anger his party with a yea vote.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, voted nay, apparently in order to keep the bill alive for further consideration.

Most Americans are unaware that it is necessary to have a full 60 vote majority to bring a bill to the floor for a vote, in cases where the minority party wishes to block it.

On December 1, 2010, all forty two Republican Senators signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stating their intention to block from vote any bill that did not include an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans. At least they seem to be able to stick with their convictions.

UPDATE

Fox "News" reported this story, stating that "the Senate voted 57 to 42 against the bill." They did not note that the vote was 42 Republican (Obstructionist) party votes against bringing the bill to a vote, nor did they vote that the Democratic party was in favor of bringing the bill to a vote. None of the other major networks have even reported the story.

UPDATE 2

It took a bit of looking, but I have now discovered that the "Honorable" Michael Burgess, my Representative in the House of Representatives, also voted with the "nays" when this bill went through the House. I am completely ashamed to be from Texas.

James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010

57 "aye" votes (57 D)

42 "nay" votes (1 D 41 R)

1 abstain (Samuel Brownback, R-KS)

Democrats voting "nay":

Harry Reid, D-NV

Republicans voting "nay":

Lamar Alexander, R-TN
John Barasso, R-WY
Robert Bennett, R-UT
Christopher Bond, R-MO
Scott Brown, R-MA
Jim Bunning, R-KY
Richard Burr, R-NC
Saxby Chambliss, R-GA
Thomas Coburn, R-OK
Thad Cochran, R-MS
Susan Collins, R-ME
Bob Corker, R-TN
John Cornyn, R-TX
Michael Crapo, R-ID
Jim DeMint, R-SC
John Ensign, R-NV
Michael Enzi, R-WY
Lindsey Graham, R-SC
Charles Grassley, R-IA
Judd Gregg, R-NH
Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Kay Hutchinson, R-TX
James Inhofe, R-OK
John Isakson, R-GA
Mike Johanns, R-NE
Mark Kirk, R-IL
Jon Kyl, R-AZ
George LeMieux, R-FL
Richard Lugar, R-IN
John McCain, R-AZ
Mitch McConnell, R-KY
Lisa Murkowski, R-AK
James Risch, R-IN
Pat Roberts, R-KS
Jeff Sessions, R-AL
Richard Shelby, R-AL
Olympia Snowe, R-ME
John Thune, R-SD
David Vitter, R-LA
George Voinovich, R-OH
Roger Wicker, R-MS

Fair Tax

It amazes me how very little the folks we elect to run our great country seem to understand economics. They have apparently all been suckered into accepting the "supply side" or "trickle down" theory. This theory says that if the upper class, ultra-rich job creators are given more money (in the form of extremely generous tax cuts) they will "trickle down" some of those extra dollars to folks less fortunate than themselves.

This theory might actually work, with greed taken out of the picture. Unfortunately, given greed, nothing seems to actually "trickle down."

The rich actually are the job creators; they just haven't been doing any of it for the last ten years. They aren't going to magically start just because we extend the tax breaks that W and the Republican controlled congress started handing out as soon as they took over.

The USA lost over 600,000 jobs under Bush before the crash and bailouts in 2008. That was when the hemorrhaging started in earnest. And now the Republicans want to extend the tax cuts, claiming that this time it will help.

The only way tax cuts can boost the economy is if the money retained via those cuts is put into the economy. Putting it into a bank account in the Cayman Islands doesn't help our economy one little bit.

Poor and middle class folks spend any extra money they get, thereby stimulating the economy. When you give extra money to the ultra rich, who already have everything they need and everything they want, they aren't going to spend it. They already spend all the money they need to on bills and entertainment. The extra will either be socked away or spent on vacation—usually somewhere outside the USA. How does ensuring that a resort waitress in Cancun or a valet parking attendant in Paris gets a good tip stimulate our economy?

Given that the top two percent of our population (and if you earn over $250,000.00 yearly, you are one of these elite) controls almost all of the wealth in this country, I think it is somewhat disingenuous of them to proudly proclaim that they pay nearly half of the taxes. I think a group that controls ninety percent of the wealth should damn well pay ninety percent of the taxes.

You hear people (usually rich people) advocate for the so-called "fair tax," but what most people do not understand is that the fair tax, while it sounds like a good deal, would be anything but fair. The fair tax is a consumption tax, whereby people would pay taxes on the dollars that they spend.

Follow this example:

Joe Blow, a lower middle class warehouse worker, makes $400.00 a week. He spends it all on rent, utilities, gas, insurance, groceries, etc. Under the fair tax rule you pay taxes when you spend money, therefore, Joe pays taxes on the entirety of his paycheck.

John CEO makes $5000.00 a week. He spends $1000.00 on his mortgage, utilities, gas, insurance, groceries, etc., and banks the rest. He would pay taxes on the $1000.00 that he spends, but would not pay taxes on the $4000.00 that he saves or invests.

Now, some people will say, "John CEO is paying more taxes than Joe Blow, what is the problem?" Even some in Joe Blow’s shoes will not see a problem with John banking $4000.00 a week tax free while Joe has nothing to save, and pays taxes on every cent he makes.

Perhaps there is a better way to do it. I am by no means a mathematical genius, so the details will have to be hashed out by those with a better understanding than I, but I think we should change our tax code so that it taxes folks on the percentage of the nation’s wealth that they actually control.

I think standard expense deductions are the wrong way to go about it. Perhaps a better way would be to document expenses. We could say that, after you pay your rent/mortgage and utilities on your primary residence (not on your six other homes that you can’t remember, Senator McCain), and after your groceries, gas, insurance and car payments (again, one car per adult per household), child care, medical expenses and documentable education expenses, then you pay taxes on what you have left. This would give those extremely rich people incentive to send their money trickling down through the economy. How stimulating that would be!
And, once all of those pesky loopholes and frivolous deductions are taken away, imagine how much we could lower tax rates once everyone is actually paying what they owe.

I am certain that folks in that upper two percent will not like this plan, but since when does two percent of the population get to dictate to the other ninety-eight percent?

Click it or Ticket

Click it or ticket. I understand that this has become a national campaign.

If I climb into my metal and glass cocoon and roll down the road without fastening my safety belt, I run the risk a police officer noticing this and giving me a ticket with an attendant hefty fine. This strikes me as absolutely hilarious, because I also ride a motorcycle.

Here in Texas, we have no helmet law, which means I can climb on my motorcycle wearing nothing more protective than a pair of shorts, and no police will harass me. And I have literally seen just that.

I saw a guy riding barefoot down interstate 35 in Dallas wearing a pair of shorts, a pair of sunglasses, and nothing else. Going 70 mph. The only thing he could have gotten a ticket for that day was the speed. The lack of protective gear would not have raised an eyebrow from a cop.

I must admit that I have absolutely no understanding of this. Why is it that I have the freedom to splatter myself unprotected over a quarter mile of highway while riding my motorcycle, but I do not have the freedom to be comparatively safe while riding seatbeltless in my car?

It puts me in mind of a bumper sticker I once saw: People are opposed to fur and not leather because it is safer to harass rich old women than biker gangs.

Perhaps that same thinking goes into the seatbelt and helmet laws.

Shakedown? How About Shut It Down?

I am continuously and repeatedly disgusted by the right wing of politics in America.

Shakedown? A 6-month moratorium on drilling is unwarranted?

All right folks, as soon as one of these blowhards figures out how to STOP THE GUSHER BP HAS VISITED ON US, then, and only then, can they talk about how any response thus far is the wrong one. As far as I see it, BP assured the Federal government that it, BP, had not only the equipment and manpower, but also the know-how to stop any disaster, BEFORE they were granted permission to start drilling this well.

Apparently they lied, just like they lied initially about the volume of oil spewing into the Gulf.

And from what I can tell, NONE of the other major or minor oil companies has a single clue how to stop this ongoing disaster.

As far as I am concerned, until someone can come up with a fix for this present problem, we need to have an open ended moratorium.

The claptrap I hear from Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, and all the other conservative voices is the rumbling of traitors as far as I am concerned. That Joe Barton, an elected representative of the American people would even CONSIDER apologizing to BP is, in my mind, the epitome of traitorism, and he should be shot by a firing squad for that offense. The folks who defend not only him, but also BP, should stand beside him for the next round of fire.

It seems to be quite in fashion for networks such as Fox to criticize President Obama’s response to this "spill", but not one single one of those critics has any idea what to do.

Joe Barton doesn’t want to live in a country where BP can be made to pay for its monumental screw up. I don’t want to live in a country where a corporation, foreign OR domestic, can be allowed to skate on such a maneuver.

And then these folks say that our government doesn’t have the right to make BP pay. Really? I know for a fact that if I am driving down the road and, for whatever reason, I lose control of my vehicle and take out a utility pole, I WILL be forced to pay to replace that pole. I don’t see any difference here.

Please, I know at least one of the folks that reads this has some way of spinning this situation where BP is some kind of victim here. Spin it for me. Please.

Maybe it will be one of the folks that are against regulation of any kind, asserting that, without regulation, companies will self-police and regulate themselves. Like BP did in this situation. Though, since these same folks seem to blame the regulators’ lack of regulating for this screw up, I don’t think I can take them seriously anyway.

Then, on the moratorium, we have folks asserting that, if there were a plane crash, the government wouldn’t shut down the entire industry while they figured out what went wrong. First, a plane crash involves only the folks on the plane and any unfortunates on the ground that happen to get landed on.

Second, anyone who had a ticket to fly on an airplane leaving an American airport at, say, 3pm on 9-11-2001: how’d that work out for you?

Illegal Immigration, Get Behind It

It is with some concern that I note that the folks who are pro illegal immigration tend to brand those who are pro rule of law as bigots who are anti immigration. For the most part, nothing could be further from the truth.

Most see nothing wrong with legal immigration. It is the illegal aspect that many folks find that they have a problem with.

Last week, a radio talk show host read an email from an admitted illegal worker in Florida. The email said that the man had attempted to go about immigration legally, but the INS folks wanted proof of assets, job skills, education, etc. This man said that he had none of those, so he simply sneaked into the country illegally.

One supposes that this logic could be carried further. Say someone needs a new car, but the bank wants a good credit rating and a sizable down payment that this person just does not have. Would this person then be justified in simply taking the car he or she needs?

The Dallas Police Department conducted a sweep of used car lots in the past few weeks, attempting to shut down a car theft ring. In the course of this campaign, the officers of the DPD had an I.C.E. agent along with them. They apprehended something in the neighborhood of nine illegals implicated in this theft ring. One of the proponents of illegals seriously asked "since when does the I.C.E. agent have the authority to ask someone for their Green Card?" Indeed.

The opponents of the newly passed Arizona Immigration law say that the enforcement of this law will require profiling. So? Profile, I say. Apparently we are so worried about offending anyone that we would rather allow a Middle Eastern male, age 18 to 35, blow up a plane rather than risk offending him by profiling him.

We would rather allow 40 million illegal invaders to cross our borders and take over our country, demanding that we all learn Spanish so as to accommodate them, rather than risk offending them by profiling them.

Has anyone at all looked into how much extra money our government spends, from the local level all the way up to the federal level, by double printing every single form they print? I do not recall seeing pages in my census form that were printed in German, Korean, Chinese, or any other language. Perhaps one could specifically request a form in another language, but the only one that was a matter of course was Spanish.

The only immigrants we seem to coddle in this way are the ones that are most likely to be illegal. The ones that, no matter what proponents might like you to believe, are not paying their share of taxes. Most are working off the record, and the ones that are working on the record have either stolen someone else’s identification, or have made up a false one.

Do not misunderstand, not all persons illegally in the United States are Latino. But seriously, what percentage aren't?

We Want Our Country Back

We want our country back. What an interesting mantra.

Exactly where (or when) do we want our country back to?

Do we want it back to where Blacks had to drink from a different water fountain?

Do we want it back to where there were no usable roads?

Do we want it back to the good old days when 11 year olds were forced to work 80 hours a week with no rights and little pay?

How about all the way back to when everyone "owned" at least a couple of other people?

What is it that we want back?

Do we want back the days when even adult workers had no rights? How does an 80 or 90 hour workweek with no overtime pay, no minimum wage, no sick time, no holiday pay, and no weekend sound? When the owner of a company could keep his employees under his thumb by paying them very little, and then extending loans to keep them working there? That song "I owe my soul to the company store" wasn’t just a song.

Oh, I know. Do we want back the days when everyone had to carry a weapon because there weren’t enough police to keep order?

Or do we want it back to where woman couldn’t vote, and could barely get a job?

How about we do away with all those costly government programs. We don’t need any federal agency to police our food and drugs. Those companies that provide that stuff will police themselves adequately. Just like the peanut butter folks a couple of years ago. Or the Vioxx folks.

Where, or when, is it exactly that we want our country back to?

How about the days when a person could be turned out of a hospital ER to die on the sidewalk just feet away because he had no insurance or cash to pay for treatment?

What DOES "We Want Our Country Back" mean, exactly?

Redistribution of Wealth

I listen to a lot of talk radio, and I hear a lot of people lamenting the idea that President Obama intends to redistribute the wealth in this country. Apparently the concern is that he will change the way we already redistribute wealth.

Ronald Reagan’s supply side economics, otherwise known as trickle down economics, worked quite well for this purpose.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

In 1981, the top 1% of Americans controlled 24.8% of the wealth in the United States, and the rest of the population controlled 75.2%.

After nearly 30 years of trickle down, in 2007 the top 1% of Americans controlled only 34.6% of the wealth, while the remaining population controlled a whopping 65.4%.

Maybe it is just me, but this distribution seems to indicate that these folks are not using their gains to create more jobs.

Apparently if we give bigger tax breaks and incentives to the wealthy, they will indeed pass something along to the less well off. What they pass along is, however, in question. Money it ain’t.
Write to your elected representatives and let them know that you do not want them to change the way things work.

Let us continue the redistribution of wealth exactly the way we have been doing since Ronald Reagan was elected, rather than turning it around and passing it back to the folks who merely work for a living.
　

Deregulate Now

Government regulation of any type needs to go away. Our Federal government tells businessmen, the very people who create jobs, that money they could spend on creating new jobs must be spent on various things that curtail their abilities to create the jobs we, as Americans, depend on.

For instance, companies have to spend untold billions of dollars every year ensuring that their workers have a safe working environment. If they did not have to spend this money on frivolous safety measures, imagine how many more jobs they could create.

Imagine too, how much money businesses could save every year by not being forced to pay workers extra simply because they work more than 40 hours a week. Or, for that matter, a minimum wage. Workers around the world subsist on several dollars a day; we Americans are spoiled to the point that we insist on wages that will pay our bills. Get a second job people. Put your children to work to make ends meet. Whatever you have to do. Your insistence on making a so-called living wage hurts your employer’s ability to hire more workers, thus decreasing unemployment. Also consider that if Americans didn’t insist on such high wages, if our average pay was even less than what other countries have, we would have zero problems with illegal immigration.

And there is another one: why should a businessman have to pay into a pool that continues to pay a worker even after the business no longer needs his services? If wages were kept low enough to inspire hiring, then that worker could easily obtain another job, even after losing his previous one.

Who are we to tell the food industry that they have to spend a fortune on food safety? Without this unnecessary expenditure, they could lower the price of the foods that we buy; thus enabling them to not only make a better profit, but to hire more workers. How many thousands of tons of otherwise good, edible food is thrown out every day simply because it has reached some arbitrary expiration date, or been "contaminated" with some cleaning chemical or other innocuous substance?

What about the drug companies? How many millions of dollars do the pharmaceutical companies have to spend on needless testing of new drugs? If they didn’t have to spend this money, they could then hire even more workers to produce their drugs, thus, again, cutting unemployment. This would also have the effect of lowering drug costs.

The airline industry, already saddled with astronomical losses because of 9-11 and soaring oil prices, could save billions if they could do away with all these silly regulations about how often they have to perform maintenance on their fleets.

And don’t get me started on unions. The TWU is currently in "negotiations" with American Airlines simply because the executives at AA were given millions of dollars in bonuses while the workers themselves took pay cuts. So what? Those executives went to college for the very purpose of being able to have a job with such bonuses. If the airlines and other industries could crush their unions, they could save billions upon billions of dollars in wages and perqs. These savings would allow them to not only hire more workers, but also to pay bigger and better bonuses to their executives, ensuring that they have the best and the brightest at the top.

Family Values

Am I the only one that finds it amusing that the Republican Party’s idea of "family values" means hiring hookers, expense account strip joints, cheating on your wife with another woman, or cheating on your wife with a man?

Apparently letting gays get married would be far more dangerous to the "sanctity of marriage" than any of these things. From all of the reports of closet gay Republican politicians, I can see why they think so.

My guess is, to their way of thinking, if it is legal for a man to marry a man, ALL men will leave their families to marry other men. This must be a Republican phenomenon, because I have to assure everyone that, no matter how legal they make it for me to marry a man, I rather like women. Even if, by some awful twist of life, my wife was to leave me, I would still not marry a man to replace her. I have to think that most folks feel this way. Maybe I am wrong.

Most folks thought their Republican Congressmen were heterosexual, God-fearing family oriented men.

To quote one of my favorite Simpson’s characters: "HA HA"

No Mandate for Private Services

I keep hearing folks say that it is unconstitutional for the United States Government to mandate that we, the American people, purchase the services of a private business. Several states’ Attorneys General have promised to sue the Federal Government if the insurance reform bill in front of the House of Representatives passes.

OK, I have a fix, at least for the mandate part. How about if we do not insist that everyone buy health insurance. How about if, instead, we say the following:

You, as an American Citizen, do not have to maintain Health Coverage on yourself. But if you opt to not carry coverage, and something happens to you, such as an unforeseen illness or injury, then you will be required to pay cash, up front, out of your own pocket or forgo any treatment for said illness or injury.

You see, right now, if you do not have coverage and something happens, you can go to a public hospital, get treatment, and simply not pay the bill. That debt then reverts to the rest of us, and our tax dollars pay for your treatment. You will have to be required to pay cash up front because we cannot take the chance that you will simply SAY that you will pay on an installment plan and then just disappear or allow your payments to lapse.

So you pay up front or you simply fix the problem yourself. That way we all can be sure that those of us who have insurance aren’t being double billed.